Guild Wars 2

Erzian.5218:

Skill, that renders the vast majority of cc skills useless and allows you to make up for 293824902380 mistakes at avoiding certain key skills, is getting fixed.

Are you talking about stability? No?

Cost.6917:

Erzian.5218:

Skill, that renders the vast majority of cc skills useless and allows you to make up for 293824902380 mistakes at avoiding certain key skills, is getting fixed.

Are you talking about stability? No?

No no, if he was talking about stability he could have just said “all” instead of “Vast majority”, and “Makes you completely immune” instead of “useless”

People who’ve never played an S/D thief love to come talk about how broken it is.

Erzian.5218:

People are crying because a Skill, that renders the vast majority of cc skills useless and allows you to make up for 293824902380 mistakes at avoiding certain key skills, is getting fixed. Sorry guys but its time to step up your/our gameplay instead of whining.

Let’s be honest. I consider myself mediocre at best. In pvp encounters I dodge randomly (and so does the large proportion of gw2 players) most of the time and I can still win most 1v1 encounters in WvW/spvp as a s/p thief and I am pretty sure I can do so after the nerf, too.
If you consider yourself good, you should be able to do so easily and if you can’t play without a spamable stunbreak, then you are simply not good but getting carried by your class.

WvW doesn’t count the amount bads that don’t know how to pvp and in wrong builds and suboptimal gear is laughable. Now when you refer to spvp do you mean hotjoin or tpvp? If your talking about hotjoin then your statement has no relevance.

I think I might troll elementalists with S/D after this patch just for spite. Anet decided that s/d thief was removing ele’s from the meta so they decided to remove it completely. The part I’m most sad about is that they actually said they plan for s/d to still be viable. I’m considering that a lie at this point. I hope this was constructive enough.

Ichishi.9613:

all the constructive feedback was already given and not replied to. So we are waiting for some enlightenment from our devs. Whether those are some answers or “thread closed”.

In closing of the main thread Jon at least says all posts were read. So wait and hope.

JonPeters:

There was a lot of great discussion in this thread as well as in the specific threads on profession, WvW, and PvP sub-forums. Even if it appeared to go unnoticed, it did not. I personally read every single post in all 11 of those threads, and I am quite certain that I am not the only developer working on balance who did so.

Hey all, where can I read the actual patch notes?

RAGE.9054:

Hey all, where can I read the actual patch notes?

No patch made yet. This thread is discussing proposed changes to be made on Dec 10th. You can read them here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/3133119

Assassin’s Reward
I’m proposing the interesting idea suggested by Enenion on Reddit’s Weekly Discussion: Thief thread.

When upgrading this trait to Grandmaster, please consider adding a component to it which also heals nearby allies. This would give thieves another group support trait, helping them become more welcome in parties and wvw groups. My vested interest is especially wvw guilds, who would currently rather want you to bring another profession.

For comparison and inspiration, here’s a list of traits that heal allies from other professions.

• Guardian. Writ of the Merciful – symbol heal allies
• Warrior. Vigorous Shouts – causes shouts to heal you and nearby allies
• Engineer. Elixir-Infused Bombs – bombs heal allies
• Elementalist. Healing Ripple – heal nearby allies when attuning to water
• Elementalist. Evasive Arcana – heal nearby allies when successfully dodging while you are attuned to water
• Necromancer. Transfusion – Life Transfer heals nearby allies

Jon, Mesmers can trait phase retreat down to a 6 second cooldown and it functions the same as our sword #2 return currently. Please consider delaying or canceling this sword nerf until other changes are ready to compensate for the loss of effectiveness. Please consider the effect of this change on build diversity. Thieves are very weapon limited and 2 sets will be affected by it.

Thank you for your time.

Jon. I appreciate the thoughtfulness and diligence your team has invested into this patch. I strongly encourage you to look to the health of the entire game, not the narrow self interest of a groups of parochial players. Don’t back down to the, as you’ve done in the past.

Once this patch goes live, down the road please look at a few improvements that this patch will now enable. Thief players are clamoring for improvements that would be imbalancing under the current state of thief mechanics.

Thank you

Zacchary don’t reply to him.

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

Forget it, Volrath.1473, they’ve already made up their mind on what they refuse to listen too. Now they’re making up excuses for the poor decision they’re making on Shadow Return, and it’s getting really sad.

2014 two major games release and with that ArenaNet has a LOT of work ahead of them when it comes to thoughtful balancing in this game. This Shadow Return nerf is the final straw showing they haven’t figured out what a S/P is within their very own game. That shows what’s NOT going on within their meetings.

How a company can sit back and make up excuse after excuse while THE MOST played is D/D and come right back to the Sword thieves again is beyond me. It’s much like one of their employees got killed by a Sword/Pistol thief and they’re crying nerf now. No real logical explanation for their logic on this.

Wait a second:

Jon replying to Shadow Return:
“The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter.”

Uhh, am I the only dumb one here seeing this? THEN Why change it in the first place? What the heck man.

Lacking logic in these decisions man . . . a LOT

Yet all of this is being based off S/D thieves because there are many of those, and only far and few of S/P thieves which yet you continue to ignore in your game over and over. Where’s your logic in this? If S/D are your concern and the least played is S/P then you probably shouldn’t have given S/D the ability in the first place and actually tried matching up skills more uniquely within the thief builds.

You guys are really handling this badly on your end. I hope people stand up and fight your decisions back with their wallets and refuse to purchase any micro economy items in your game until you guys walk out of your Balance Meetings with more meaning logic and decisions for these changes. I already have stood down to purchasing anything until I see a reasonable change to this class from your team.

LoneWolfie.1852:

phys.7689:

so a pistol/dagger thief has more torments, stealth bleeds, imobs cripples
so a dagger dagger thief has more cloak and dagger, bleeds and evasions
so a sword dagger thief is gaining more initiative while dancing around
so a sword pistol theif is gaining more initiative while dancing around/stunning players

so a venom sharing build isnt giving up all the positional shadow steps and only pressing 1 because he got no ini

Yeah i get that it MAY slightly effect people doing a max dps rotation versus a mob that is never a threat to them and so they never do anything but attack, but i dont think that one playstyle should be the one which forces all others to have crappy ini gains. In fact i would hope they improve thier AI to where thats never the right answer for a fight.

how do you realistically propose they give all the builds which actually need more ini regen ini, without increasing the 80 you are used to, to 120 ini?

WOW. That’s very simple… how about giving thieves base regen of 1/second without any strings attached? Doesn’t mean flat out increasing the regen = instant OP thief. If you recall we’re getting FLAT nerfs on our Vigor. If our crit line is indeed generating too much initiative, we can tweak opportunist a little.

You are still failing to realize the key here is balancing the traits among themselves. Regardless of whether thief is op for other classes, the ini traits would still be requirements for the best builds. You wouldn’t be making more builds viable, you’d just be buffing everything.

Yes thief needs various buffs, but there’s a difference between balancing builds and balancing classes against each other

phys.7689:

LoneWolfie.1852:

phys.7689:

so a pistol/dagger thief has more torments, stealth bleeds, imobs cripples
so a dagger dagger thief has more cloak and dagger, bleeds and evasions
so a sword dagger thief is gaining more initiative while dancing around
so a sword pistol theif is gaining more initiative while dancing around/stunning players

so a venom sharing build isnt giving up all the positional shadow steps and only pressing 1 because he got no ini

Yeah i get that it MAY slightly effect people doing a max dps rotation versus a mob that is never a threat to them and so they never do anything but attack, but i dont think that one playstyle should be the one which forces all others to have crappy ini gains. In fact i would hope they improve thier AI to where thats never the right answer for a fight.

how do you realistically propose they give all the builds which actually need more ini regen ini, without increasing the 80 you are used to, to 120 ini?

WOW. That’s very simple… how about giving thieves base regen of 1/second without any strings attached? Doesn’t mean flat out increasing the regen = instant OP thief. If you recall we’re getting FLAT nerfs on our Vigor. If our crit line is indeed generating too much initiative, we can tweak opportunist a little.

You are still failing to realize the key here is balancing the traits among themselves. Regardless of whether thief is op for other classes, the ini traits would still be requirements for the best builds. You wouldn’t be making more builds viable, you’d just be buffing everything.

Yes thief needs various buffs, but there’s a difference between balancing builds and balancing classes against each other

Are you a Thief? No? What’s your point, then?

Sage.4170:

phys.7689:

so a pistol/dagger thief has more torments, stealth bleeds, imobs cripples
so a dagger dagger thief has more cloak and dagger, bleeds and evasions
so a sword dagger thief is gaining more initiative while dancing around
so a sword pistol theif is gaining more initiative while dancing around/stunning players

so a venom sharing build isnt giving up all the positional shadow steps and only pressing 1 because he got no ini

Yeah i get that it MAY slightly effect people doing a max dps rotation versus a mob that is never a threat to them and so they never do anything but attack, but i dont think that one playstyle should be the one which forces all others to have crappy ini gains. In fact i would hope they improve thier AI to where thats never the right answer for a fight.

how do you realistically propose they give all the builds which actually need more ini regen ini, without increasing the 80 you are used to, to 120 ini?

Note the weaponset you didn’t mention. The one that’s not the Thief “universal offhand” (Shortbow).

You know, the one that’s only used for one very initiative-heavy attack, that’s outperformed by shortbow and all the melee options?

Yeah, Pistol/Pistol.

Considering how Pistol/Pistol was originally mentioned as “underperforming” by the Devs back in May, and here we are in December with no useful changes to it, I’d rather not nerf the hell out of P/P just to achieve a tangential nerf on the sets you mentioned.

They need to look at the reasons why people take 30 points in Critical Strikes (and end up getting 15 points along the way), and why people were taking the initiative-buffing traits (hint: It’s because most of the others are situational or outright bad).

But instead they’re just changing stuff along one axis of adjustment without really looking at any of the others.

Imo balancing all other builds around pistol pistols current meta is pointless because the current p/p shouldn’t exist. It needs a total rework, and probably unique mechanics.

the hate of S/D thief from developers is beyond comprehension. RIP S/D thief forever.

Basically the new changes will give us less control of our initiative and we’ll be forced to rely more on the automatic initiative regeneration instead of skill-based initiative regeneration and of course thats a problem cause we wont be able to have the initiative we want the exact moment we need it. And above all, you have been nerfing the thief class since Gw2 launch. In every single MMO nobody understands what the “rogue” class is. Its a tactical class which means if the player is smart on how he/she uses the class he/she can beat nearly every other class. So basically thats why people complain about the thief class. Because you actually need to have experience against such a class to beat it. Yet once again, people that complain about the thief class being overpowered will get their way…

Crawford.4135:

phys.7689:

LoneWolfie.1852:

phys.7689:

so a pistol/dagger thief has more torments, stealth bleeds, imobs cripples
so a dagger dagger thief has more cloak and dagger, bleeds and evasions
so a sword dagger thief is gaining more initiative while dancing around
so a sword pistol theif is gaining more initiative while dancing around/stunning players

so a venom sharing build isnt giving up all the positional shadow steps and only pressing 1 because he got no ini

Yeah i get that it MAY slightly effect people doing a max dps rotation versus a mob that is never a threat to them and so they never do anything but attack, but i dont think that one playstyle should be the one which forces all others to have crappy ini gains. In fact i would hope they improve thier AI to where thats never the right answer for a fight.

how do you realistically propose they give all the builds which actually need more ini regen ini, without increasing the 80 you are used to, to 120 ini?

WOW. That’s very simple… how about giving thieves base regen of 1/second without any strings attached? Doesn’t mean flat out increasing the regen = instant OP thief. If you recall we’re getting FLAT nerfs on our Vigor. If our crit line is indeed generating too much initiative, we can tweak opportunist a little.

You are still failing to realize the key here is balancing the traits among themselves. Regardless of whether thief is op for other classes, the ini traits would still be requirements for the best builds. You wouldn’t be making more builds viable, you’d just be buffing everything.

Yes thief needs various buffs, but there’s a difference between balancing builds and balancing classes against each other

Are you a Thief? No? What’s your point, then?

Had a level 80 thief since like 4 weeks after release. So yeah I am. Point is thief needs more viable builds. By making it so 50% of max ini regen comes from a few traits everyone has to take those traits. Which severely limits builds.

Buffs compared to other classes ia a seperate issue and needs its own solutions

Crawford.4135:

phys.7689:

LoneWolfie.1852:

phys.7689:

so a pistol/dagger thief has more torments, stealth bleeds, imobs cripples
so a dagger dagger thief has more cloak and dagger, bleeds and evasions
so a sword dagger thief is gaining more initiative while dancing around
so a sword pistol theif is gaining more initiative while dancing around/stunning players

so a venom sharing build isnt giving up all the positional shadow steps and only pressing 1 because he got no ini

Yeah i get that it MAY slightly effect people doing a max dps rotation versus a mob that is never a threat to them and so they never do anything but attack, but i dont think that one playstyle should be the one which forces all others to have crappy ini gains. In fact i would hope they improve thier AI to where thats never the right answer for a fight.

how do you realistically propose they give all the builds which actually need more ini regen ini, without increasing the 80 you are used to, to 120 ini?

WOW. That’s very simple… how about giving thieves base regen of 1/second without any strings attached? Doesn’t mean flat out increasing the regen = instant OP thief. If you recall we’re getting FLAT nerfs on our Vigor. If our crit line is indeed generating too much initiative, we can tweak opportunist a little.

You are still failing to realize the key here is balancing the traits among themselves. Regardless of whether thief is op for other classes, the ini traits would still be requirements for the best builds. You wouldn’t be making more builds viable, you’d just be buffing everything.

Yes thief needs various buffs, but there’s a difference between balancing builds and balancing classes against each other

Are you a Thief? No? What’s your point, then?

Once they narrow the extremes, hopefully they can buff rd adjust the class as a whole. That’s why opportunist is being changed along with vigor access and stealth access (for d/p). Although I disagree with the vigor nerfs because that is not what’s causing the extreme evasion builds, I understand the final objective. If they buffed thieves across the board wuthout nerfing the viable builds, the extremes would be that much more powerful and our forum would be flooded with even more qq. It’s sort of the opposite of the method they used with warriors by buffing the baseline first then narrowing the extremes (hambow). Anyway, it might be a bad few months for the thief but hopefully the class will eventually come out better for it.

Again, I don’t like all the nerfs because there are builds that will be destroyed in the short term by this, but long-term they might make sense.

Erzian.5218:

People are crying because a Skill, that renders the vast majority of cc skills useless and allows you to make up for 293824902380 mistakes at avoiding certain key skills, is getting fixed. Sorry guys but its time to step up your/our gameplay instead of whining.

Let’s be honest. I consider myself mediocre at best. In pvp encounters I dodge randomly (and so does the large proportion of gw2 players) most of the time and I can still win most 1v1 encounters in WvW/spvp as a s/p thief and I am pretty sure I can do so after the nerf, too.
If you consider yourself good, you should be able to do so easily and if you can’t play without a spamable stunbreak, then you are simply not good but getting carried by your class.

so a mistake is getting hit once by CC which = death? hrm…. if we werent so fragile id tend to agree with you. but since we are you are without a doubt…plain wrong.

I know Jon already sort of responded to this idea about nerfing the retun range on sword, but what about also making the return ring visible to the enemy in addition to shortening the range so there would be the capability of more counterplay without removing the ability to juke during a stun or use it as a dodge. 360 milliseconds may not seem long but as far as I know if you added such a delay to regular dodges it would render them useless as a reactive mechanic.

Thanks for leaving the individual forum threads open to encourage further discussion.

sword 2 is fine. everything is basically fine the way it is. p/p and s/p and perhaps dagger 4 need some rework.

Without wasting traits or talking gear. compare guardian (or any class) to thief.
The average thief attack is 4.25 initiative (sometimes more depending on build) which means 3 attacks and you are done until 15 seconds later INCLUDING if you switch weapons. Guardian has attacks 2 3 4 5 then weapon swap and 2 3 4 5 again. thats 8 attacks before a guardian has to stop and about 1-4 seconds before he can rinse and repeat most of them. so without either class having stats or gear…. the thief is at a pretty sever disadvantage having only really 1 set to use and less attacks overall in the same time frame. this is why thieves HAVE to bring init traits. if u were going to change anythign on opportunist i would only make the cooldown 2 seconds. anything more makes it obsolete.

As for return on IS/IR it was better off as a stun breaker too. thieves are SOOOOO fragile with s/d bc its a berserker ONLY build. most thieves have between 10.8k and 13k hp. thats 2 attacks from a warrior using hammer…. of which if u donthave shadow step ready u are dead.

thieves use carrion and berserker (sometimes with a touch of valk). this leaves 3 viable builds p/d d/p and s/d (arguable). not much to choose from

we have 5 utilities to choose from
we have 2 armor sets to choose from
we have 2 weaponsets to choose from (s/d is arguable IMO)
we have 3 – 4 traits in each line to choose from.

everything a thief has is pigeonholed.

rchu.8945:

the hate of S/D thief from developers is beyond comprehension. RIP S/D thief forever.

They hardly hate thieves, lol. they are improving them along with fixing some exploitable elements next patch.

rchu.8945:

the hate of S/D thief from developers is beyond comprehension. RIP S/D thief forever.

Likely not forever.

I don’t doubt that Anet has in mind changes to made S/D better, part of which involves limiting how good IR is.

The issue is, they’re implementing the IR change before they implement the other changes that will allow S/D to be competitive in the current and upcoming meta’s without instant IR.

It’s an extremely poor decision to make in my (and almost every top player’s) opinion, but it seems like its coming nonetheless. It’ll suck for a few months (Anet SOP), but hopefully it will spur ANet to make the changes Sword MH needs to keep it competitive without the need for IR in its current form.

Wouldn’t it be fun for once if they actually buffed a spec before they nerfed another part of it? The way mug was done is another example of a poorly done series of changes. Why wasn’t steal’s CD shortened the same time mug was nerfed? Why did we have to wait so long for the compensation? Nerfing sword now feels the same but we don’t even know if the future buff is even coming.

Hype.8032:

Wouldn’t it be fun for once if they actually buffed a spec before they nerfed another part of it? The way mug was done is another example of a poorly done series of changes. Why wasn’t steal’s CD shortened the same time mug was nerfed? Why did we have to wait so long for the compensation? Nerfing sword now feels the same but we don’t even know if the future buff is even coming.

That would imbalance the thief. I’d rather they take it very slowly to keep other classes from hating thieves so much.

phys.7689:

Crawford.4135:

phys.7689:

LoneWolfie.1852:

phys.7689:

so a pistol/dagger thief has more torments, stealth bleeds, imobs cripples
so a dagger dagger thief has more cloak and dagger, bleeds and evasions
so a sword dagger thief is gaining more initiative while dancing around
so a sword pistol theif is gaining more initiative while dancing around/stunning players

so a venom sharing build isnt giving up all the positional shadow steps and only pressing 1 because he got no ini

Yeah i get that it MAY slightly effect people doing a max dps rotation versus a mob that is never a threat to them and so they never do anything but attack, but i dont think that one playstyle should be the one which forces all others to have crappy ini gains. In fact i would hope they improve thier AI to where thats never the right answer for a fight.

how do you realistically propose they give all the builds which actually need more ini regen ini, without increasing the 80 you are used to, to 120 ini?

WOW. That’s very simple… how about giving thieves base regen of 1/second without any strings attached? Doesn’t mean flat out increasing the regen = instant OP thief. If you recall we’re getting FLAT nerfs on our Vigor. If our crit line is indeed generating too much initiative, we can tweak opportunist a little.

You are still failing to realize the key here is balancing the traits among themselves. Regardless of whether thief is op for other classes, the ini traits would still be requirements for the best builds. You wouldn’t be making more builds viable, you’d just be buffing everything.

Yes thief needs various buffs, but there’s a difference between balancing builds and balancing classes against each other

Are you a Thief? No? What’s your point, then?

Had a level 80 thief since like 4 weeks after release. So yeah I am. Point is thief needs more viable builds. By making it so 50% of max ini regen comes from a few traits everyone has to take those traits. Which severely limits builds.

Buffs compared to other classes ia a seperate issue and needs its own solutions

Actually, I think you’re wrong about initiative.

As it so happens, with this upcoming initiative change, all builds are going to have more initiative. This means that the marginal benefit for additional initiative already starts off fairly low, and thus discourages players from spending valuable trait points into the Trix trait line. This means that one of our trait lines is rendered useless.

Furthermore, builds that didn’t require more initiative but could certainly benefit from it (ie D/P) gain more than do builds that used lots of initiative (ie S/D) and were on equal footing as other thief builds, but because of decreasing marginal benefit actually become worse than these other builds.

Finally, what builds have been rendered useless because they don’t have enough initiative? I can’t really think of any. Instead, all of the evidence points towards this change, in fact, decreasing build viability.

Sanduskel you’re now up to 16 posts in this thread, none of which have said anything more than the first. Give it a rest.

Stooperdale.3560:

Sanduskel you’re now up to 16 posts in this thread, none of which have said anything more than the first. Give it a rest.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/11#post3174287

Please, dont feed the troll.

Stooperdale.3560:

Sanduskel you’re now up to 16 posts in this thread, none of which have said anything more than the first. Give it a rest.

Some of us thieves love the patch changes and don’t want anet to cave to the negative nancies that flood this forum.

Most of us see the issues with a specific subset of these changes, and are only expressing our opinions. This isn’t the rambling of some random, inexperienced loudmouth on the forums – it’s reflected and represented by a number of top TPvP players.

I only hope you take those prognostications, generated from experience, seriously.

Look at the full revised patch notes and you’ll see that while thieves are not super OP they are getting nerfed and buffed in different ways. This patch will actually kill 2 popular builds(not saying it is/isn’t deserved, this was Anet’s judgment). Now look at the necro…all buffs except the loss of 1 bleed on mark and longer recharge on curses 4…

The buff to warriors allowed them to suppress nonsensical condition spam but if they’re nerfed too much we might see a meta filled with nothing but condis. Only time will tell if the thief can find a place in the patch.

Better nerf thief!

well eliminating some blatantly exploitable elements should allow anet to fix other problems such as our ranged deficit, etc. however, they cannot do those things when more players see thieves as op’d in wvw.

Mr. Peters,
I am very curious as to if thieves will get a 1200 range option. This isn’t something that I see as changing the mechanics of thieves, but it would add some major conveniences, such as being able to stay further back in WvW when ranging, or in PvE, being able to stack and stay out of AoE rings while still being able to hit the enemy (what I have personally suffered most from). I’m just curious if this change is something that is even considered or not to look forward to this convenience. Thanks.

Sanduskel.1850:

well eliminating some blatantly exploitable elements should allow anet to fix other problems such as our ranged deficit, etc. however, they cannot do those things when more players see thieves as op’d in wvw.

They don’t have to fix player-side problems before working on legitimate game problems. In fact, they could easily negate any form of complaints by saying “we are not going to do this” so long as they choose to do so.

Perma stealth for example is not a player side problem. ANET admitted that permastealth is an unintended abuse of mechanics. look up the notes. they’ve stated so.

Sanduskel.1850:

Perma stealth for example is not a player side problem. ANET admitted that permastealth is an unintended abuse of mechanics. look up the notes. they’ve stated so.

Fighting against stealth is player-side. They can’t fix that without removing stealth completely.

No. Bad stealth mechanics, which is what they are fixing, are server side. They are fixing them without removing stealth. I am happy because they can address other problems with thieves without the playerbase erupting with cries of favoritism.

It actually is a player-side problem.

Before a thief could stack up over a minute of stealth (which was corrected) and thieves could chain stealth right after they attacked (which was countered with revealed).

Since then, a thief in stealth can’t do anything in it besides reapply stealth lest they get it removed. Thieves can’t also stay in stealth more than 16 seconds before having to reapply it. The most anyone has ever seen nowadays was a little over 5 minutes of straight stealth and it requires a build that absolutely cannot work in combat. So there really isn’t a major problem here.

The main problem people have with thieves comes from a single attack that can easily hit 5-digits (something that anet intended for the profession) and permastealth does not affect it in the slightest due to the revealed mechanic. You stealth, do a stealth attack, wait a few seconds, repeat.

I don’t see what you are trying to get at.

Perma stealth is highly annoying. Many thieves can hit hard AND permastealth. I get grief for playing my thief characters all the time because of this utterly HATED and despised dynamic. In team speak and chat. everyone hate thieves because of this. I can’t wait for it to change.

Bacon.4918:

I deleted my thief; no reason to waste the character slot after December 10th.

I am actually waiting for the patch, but I already made a warrior(it feels great btw) and I am getting my wvw ranks slowly back up. Thief is shelved, because I liked only the sword fighting style and they are killing the only advantage it had over dagger(shadow return being an immediate displacement even while under cc).

Permastealthed thieves won’t do anything to you. Otherwise, they are not permastealthed.

I still don’t get what you are trying to say.

Speak with the rest of the player base. They are the ones decrying our class for this hated mechanic.

Most of the players aren’t complaining about the profession anymore. Thieves melt so easily in this meta that the only ones who use them are diehards.

This weekend I’ve been playing my mesmer and necro trying to decide which will be my new main. I’ve been wanting to get good at another class regardless but Anet’s handling of thief balance has kitten ed me off. Feeling weaker and weaker each patch and having to try harder each time to remain relevant really blows. The sword #2 change is so huge. I know it won’t be fun anymore and playing other professions made me fully realize that everyone can do stuff like that.

-A stunned necro can switch into DS and fear the opponent away. No stunbreak.
-A mesmer can phase retreat away. No stunbreak.
-Using the wurm and spectral walk a necro can shadowstomp the same way a sword thief can
-Using phase retreat and blink (or portals) a mesmer can shadowstomp just like a sword thief.

How is it possible that a necro can be a better thief than a thief? Anet, you’re letting a necro use mobility to secure a stomp while simultaneously preventing thieves from the same! Both of the 2 things Jon mentioned needing nerfed from this IR change can be done by other classes. Am I taking crazy pills?

Hype.8032:

Jon, Mesmers can trait phase retreat down to a 6 second cooldown and it functions the same as our sword #2 return currently. Please consider delaying or canceling this sword nerf until other changes are ready to compensate for the loss of effectiveness. Please consider the effect of this change on build diversity. Thieves are very weapon limited and 2 sets will be affected by it.

Thank you for your time.

This.
I didn’t see [Phase Retreat] getting a cast time.This is exactly the same skill than IR. Why would it be OP on a thief and not on a mesmer ?
Furthermore, mesmer has a real stunbreaker on weapon skill (Sword 3) which does teleport & stun break (much more difficult to use this way, I admit).

If you are balancing professions, either Phase retreat should have a cast time or Sword 2 should remain instant as it is.

Zacchary.6183:

Most of the players aren’t complaining about the profession anymore. Thieves melt so easily in this meta that the only ones who use them are diehards.

I disagree. I hear and see them spew hatred for this class all the time.

Phase retreat is arguably the best comparision with its fairly low cooldown and should get a cast time also if the thief version does.

However they dont seem to balance skill mechanics exactly the same across the classes.

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For example, eles have tornado elite with 20 sec stability on a 180 cooldown. They used to be able to cancel the skill and retain the stability boon. This was deemed op and removed so that they lose stability immediately when canceling the elite.

Thieves by comparision have an elite with 9 sec stability on a 90 sec cooldown, half the duration but twice as often. So more or less the same amount of stability overall.

Thieves can cancel the elite ability and retain their stability boon, unlike eles who lose theirs. This can be used to stealth+stability stomp, or stability+shadow refuge in both cases denying enemy counter play from pulls or knockbacks.

Its arguable that this on demand stability is actually more useful to thieves then it was to eles, but in any case the devs have decided to allow this so far.